Can you please not post shallow dismissals or personal attacks or generic tangents or flamebait, or call names, in HN comments? You did all of those things here.

I'm glad that you've found satisfaction in having children, but that's no reason to put someone else down.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Children as your legacy are no less consequential or meaningful than this man's stone walls. In the end you are grasping for empty meaning and purpose in the same way the farmer is, your children will perish, their children will perish, you will be forgotten and so will they like the rest of human existence. Our lives have no larger purpose or meaning beyond what ever we pretend gives meaning to your life, like children or stone walls.

We are mere Spatiotemporal blips of information in the infant universe with delusions of grandeur. So if you have to tell yourself deep in the night that you actualising your reproductive prerogative makes your sad little life more meaningful than the farmer, please grasp at those straws.

That's such an unkind thing to say about another person's life. He seems like a contented and inoffensive person, and he's quietly living the only life he'll ever have. There's real dignity in that. I do wonder why you wrote this.

As for children: being a parent myself, I think it's best not to instrumentalise them by viewing them as a legacy that you'll leave behind after you. They're their own people. They don't owe you that obligation.

People are different, with different desires, personalities, mentalities, ..... Isn't it only natural then that 'happiness' would be different from one person to another?

Why speak low about him? You're content with your life, and he is content with his... it really is that simple.

You can't go up to an artist and say, "Hey, your painting is crap, you should change x, y, z," because it is the artist's painting, not yours.

Such a close-minded view. Children are great but they're just more people with their own experiences, like this man. And it seems rare these days that they might be as naturally at-one with the world around them as he is.

JFC, who speaks like this about someone else? Have some respect for a kind man who's content living a simple life.

Imagine if someone looked at your comment and denigrated it "oh wow you had unprotected sex with your partner and managed to not kill your kids before they turned 18. Congrats on the achievement!"

There are many paths to happiness, no need to denigrate this man's life.

> those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s

Ah, yes. A planet completely ruined by overpopulation. That is your legacy.

Also, your existence is just as meaningless as this farmer's. You probably remember your grandparents, at least you know a little about their lives. What about your grandparents parents, or your grandparents grandparents. They were people with their own full lives, hopes and dreams. Do you even know their names ? Let alone what they were like, what they cared about, what their life was like ?

They are forgotten, just like you will be, regardless of how many children they had.

That man has set the ideal conditions for raising a lot of children. While most city dwellers scramble from 9 to 5 to own but a cramped apartment—which also leads most of them to forgo having children in the first place—this farmer has plenty of time, and plenty of space. And he grows his own food! It's the ideal condition to raise children. And it's far safer too. I would know, because I grew up on one. But today both women and men are of course taught that a career is much better, toiling for the dreams of another man. Well, I'm not so sure.

Yes, what an amazing world we are leaving our children. I'm sure they'll be so thankful of the task our habits and livelihoods have left them. You've left them so much, indeed.

A human being's inability to accept he is a finite random experiment with no specific purpose is the cause of most of suffering.

Children are not the penultimate achievement of humanity. In fact, they're one of the core things that take zero learned skill and can be created and raised entirely via instinctual means.

I would argue that those who leave the most behind are those who are kind and thoughtful to those in their lives. They leave behind one of the most important and precious things that anyone ever could - pleasant memories in the minds and experiences of others. They brought direct happiness to others through their kindness. This is the type of person I strive to be, and I feel enriched and deeply fulfilled when successful in doing so. In some ways, the type of peace that can bring can be one of the few things that you can "take with you" in death, in that you will feel that happiness until your very last moment, which you will most likely not generally do with material possessions.

My peasant grandmother very rarely set foot outside her village’s mountain valley. When my grandfather got to held an important political party position she had to make do with living ~20 km down the valley in the area’s only town (that’s where my dad was born), but as soon as the chance arose to get back to her village she immediately took it (and I presume she also convinced my grandfather to take it, he became the village’s mayor).

She was very, very happy with her way of living (she lived to about 85 or 86), almost no medical problems in her entire life (apart from the last couple of years), why would she have wanted to give that all away? For some fancy trips to the seaside? That was not what she considered a good way of living.

I'm afraid that those children of yours might not be left behind with good manners.

It is a simplified illusion.

I always wanted to do ancestry for my family (family tree?) And I realized and still realize how far away people really become.

My last grandpa will die soon. I know his stories everyone knows but I don't know what he would have voted, what his favorite food is, what music he liked.

He has dementia now and forgets that he is at home and asks go go home.

What do I know from his life really?

He will end in some online tool as a name, two dates an image and lines connecting him to other family members.

I thought about making a legacy somehow and if I would make children I would create a family book and create rules which would share my thoughts with every future generation and everyone gets reached to follow it and enhance it like having Familie values and keeping them.

But at the end of the day I do realize for myself that this will not work as imagined and it doesn't matter at the end anyway.

People who have children do indeed leave a lot more behind. Yet almost nobody can name their great great grandparents, know what they looked like, or in fact, know anything about them. Sure, "you're their legacy", but they never got to know you and vice versa.

If you meditate then ironically you're trying to achieve the state of mind this man has achieved and lives every day.

What an arrogant opinion. You're unduly proud of being a parent. There is no inherent value to it at all. You force beings into this world and believe this is a feat? Ridiculous.

Your child is just as likely to be a terrible person as they are a good one.

In fact, having children significantly increases the risk that what you leave behind is actually detremental to the world overall.

It takes a special lack of irony to write a comment like this. One of the most closed minded comments I've ever read.

Children learn from their parents and if this is your attitude then I expect your children will inherit it. Will the world be better for them and their perspective of it is the same as yours? I very much doubt it.

Hopefully your children will learn how not to judge others for different life choices, perhaps they will be more humble and not assume superiority over others just because they had children.

In case you had not looked around the world recently, having children is no great achievement. Any idiot can have them.

Happiness is a negative. It’s the absence of pain and boredom. It’s achieved by negating those two forces. Or so sayeth Schopenhauer.

Perhaps he gets more satisfaction out of a stone wall than a child. Happiness and achievement are completely subjective. It isn't a credit to anyone who doesn't grasp that, much less denigrate another out of that lack of understanding.

Why is it a lobotomy to enjoy something? And sure you might have added code to Facebook to more accurately track users, or you made a 1% difference to your employer's bottom line, but this guy is a farmer, and you can have all the money in the world but at some point you still need a farmer somewhere to supply you with goods. No one NEEDS what you create. So perhaps don't be so derogatory about others life choices, I am pretty certain that this farmer would not criticize you for your choices.

Think of all the people who made an impact on history and the world. How many of them did it by having children?

This guy at least got an article written about him, what have you done?

is it that hard to accept others perspective ?

> If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it.

Why not? By definition it would leave you happy, what does it matter?

>I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s.

How many children are optimum?

Are we to infer that you aren't happy?

Children are continuations of your own or someone else's membrane, but this man built one himself /s

Children aren't much of a legacy either. They have 50% of your DNA and nurture. Grandkids 25%. Grand-grandkids 12.5%. Within a few generations your contribution is watered down to almost nil. Children are amazing in their own right, but they're not exactly a legacy. If you want legacy, write a good book, start a successful company, etc; ideas are things that can become legacy.

In enough generations, not one atom of your descendent's DNA will be specifically yours. The impact of your parenting will be diluted. The time spent on parenting shuts off an infinity of other options. I adore my children but the ways we enrich our culture and those around us matters just as much as our kids. And besides, why should a well-lived life look the same for him as for others?

This sounds quite sanctimonious, just because you have children doesn’t mean your life is somehow more valid than those that don’t. This mans life is arguably more valuable to society than us sat in an office. He’s producing food and helping to feed a nation

*I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

This valley dwellers will be there long after the ruins you created swallowed all you touch.